Build castles in the air. [ Burton ]
Splitting the air with noise. [ William Shakespeare ]
The babbling gossip of the air. [ William Shakespeare ]
Imagination is the air of mind. [ Bailey ]
Music is the poetry of the air. [ Jean Paul Richter ]
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground. [ Pope ]
Oh, may I with myself agree,
And never covet what I see.
Content me with an humble shade,
My passions tamed, my wishes laid;
For, while our wishes wildly roll.
We banish quiet from the soul.
It is thus the busy beat the air,
And misers gather wealth and care. [ Dyer ]
A fool's speech is a bubble of air. [ Proverb ]
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes. [ Wordsworth ]
Just above yon sandy bar,
As the day grows fainter and dimmer.
Lonely and lovely, a single star
Lights the air with a dusky glimmer. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Light-leaved acacias, by the door,
Stood up in balmy air.
Clusters of blossomed moonlight bore.
And breathed a perfume rare. [ George MacDonald ]
News as wholesome as the morning air. [ Chapman ]
That air and harmony of shape express,
Fine by degrees, and beautifully less. [ Prior ]
Castles in the air (castles in Spain). [ French ]
Earth, air, and ocean, glorious three. [ R. Montgomery ]
Earth's liquid jewelry, wrought of air. [ Bailey ]
Earth, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood. [ Shelley ]
Who live on fancy, and can feed on air. [ Gay ]
I count this thing to be grandly true:
That a noble deed is a step toward God,
Lifting the soul from the common clod
To a purer air and a broader view. [ J. G. Holland, Pseudonym: Timothy Titcomb ]
It is an ill air where we gain nothing. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
I count this thing to be grandly true.
That a noble deed is a step towards God:
Lifting the soul from the common sod
To a purer air and a broader view. [ J. G. Holland ]
Here eglantine embalm'd the air,
Hawthorne and hazel mingled there;
The primrose pale, and violet flower.
Found in each cliff a narrow bower;
Fox-glove and nightshade, side by side.
Emblems of punishment and pride,
Group'd their dark hues with every stain
The weather-beaten crags retain. [ Sir Walter Scott ]
Music to the mind is as air to the body. [ Plato ]
Thoughts shut up want air.
And spoil like bales unopened to the sun. [ Edward Young ]
Lord, help me through this warld o' care,
I'm weary sick o't late and air;
Not but I hae a richer share
Than mony ithers;
But why should ae man better fare,
And a' men brithers? [ Burns ]
Sweet is the air with the budding haws,
and the valley stretching for miles below
Is white with blossoming cherry-trees,
as if just covered with lightest snow. [ Longfellow ]
The chambers in the house of dreams
Are fed with so divine an air.
That Time's hoar wings grow young therein.
And they who walk there are most fair. [ Francis Thomson ]
Charm ache with air, and agony with words. [ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act V. Sc.1 ]
Steps with a tender foot, light as on air.
The lovely, lordly creature floated on. [ Tennyson ]
A melancholy sound is in the air,
A deep sigh in the distance, a shrill wail
Around my dwelling. 'Tis the Wind of night [ William Cullen Bryant ]
Roasted pigeons don't fly through the air. [ Dutch Proverb ]
It is a great act of life to sell air well. [ Proverb ]
Tomorrow; never yet was born
In earth's dull atmosphere a thing so fair
Never tripped, with footsteps light as air,
So glad a vision over the hills of morn. [ Julia C. R. Dorr ]
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. [ Gray ]
The sea drinks the air and the sun the sea. [ Anacreon ]
Her air, her manners, all who saw admired;
Courteous though coy, gentle though retired. [ Crabbe ]
Cheerful at morn he wakes from short repose,
Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes. [ Goldsmith ]
The applause of the people is a blast of air. [ Proverb ]
Such harmony in motion, speech and air,
That without fairness, she was more than fair. [ Crabbe ]
Air, earth, and seas, obey'd the Almighty nod,
And with a general fear confess'd the God. [ Dryden ]
'Tis beautiful, when first the dewy light
Breaks on the earth! while yet the scented air
Is breathing the cool freshness of the night
And the bright clouds a tint of crimson wear. [ Elizabeth M. Chandler ]
Fairest of all that earth beholds, the hues
That live among the clouds, and flush the air,
Lingering and deepening at the hour of dews. [ Bryant ]
Though the chameleon Love can feed on the air,
I am one that am nourished by my victuals. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II. Sc. 1 ]
It is an ill air where nothing is to be gained. [ Proverb ]
Dexterity lends an air of ease to every action. [ G. Crabb ]
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies. [ Pope ]
Oh, greatness! thou art but a flattering dream,
A watery bubble, lighter than the air. [ Tracy ]
The bells themselves are the best of preachers,
Their brazen lips are learned teachers.
From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air,
Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw.
Shriller than trumpets under the Law,
Now a sermon and now a prayer. [ Longfellow ]
As timid violets lade the ambient air
With their heart's richest fragrance, unaware
The fragrance whispers that the flower is there. [ Anna Katharine Green ]
Shun equally a sombre air and vivacious sallies. [ Marcus Antoninus ]
The noisy drum hath nothing in it, but mere air. [ Proverb ]
His eloquence is classic in its style,
Not brilliant with explosive coruscations
Of heterogeneous thoughts, at random caught.
And scattered like a shower of shooting stars,
That end in darkness: no; - his noble mind
Is clear, and full, and stately, and serene.
His earnest and undazzled eye he keeps
Fixed on the sun of Truth, and breathes his words
As easily as eagles cleave the air,
And never pauses till the height is won;
And all who listen follow where he leads. [ Mrs. Hale ]
Hear the mellow wedding bells.
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten golden notes,
And all in tune
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listen? while she gloats
On the moon! [ Poe ]
How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air.
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain
Breaks the serene heaven:
In full-orb'd glory yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night! [ Southey ]
O happy unowned youths! your limbs can bear
The scorching dog-star and the winter's air,
While the rich infant, nursed with care and pain,
Thirsts with each heat and coughs with every rain! [ Gay ]
There is a vast deal of vital air in loving words. [ Landor ]
The common ingredients of health and long life are:
Great temperance, open air,
Easy labor, little care. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Birds, the free tenants of earth, air, and ocean,
Their forms all symmetry, their motion grace,
In plumage delicate and beautiful,
Thick without burthen, close as fish's scales.
Or loose as full blown poppies on the gale;
With wings that seem as they'd a soul within them.
They bear their owners with such sweet enchantment. [ James Montgomery ]
At last the golden oriental gate
Of greatest heaven began to open fair;
And Phoebus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate,
Came dancing forth shaking his dewy hair,
And hurled his glistering beams through gloomy air. [ Spenser ]
A feather in hand is better than a bird in the air. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
And her face so fair
Stirr'd with her dream, as rose-leaves with the air. [ Byron ]
... but while
I breathe Heaven's air, and Heaven looks down on me.
And smiles at my best meanings, I remain
Mistress of mine own self and mine own soul. [ Tennyson ]
A chill air surrounds those who are down in the world. [ George Eliot ]
He that builds castles in the air will soon have no land. [ Proverb ]
Air coming in at a window, is as bad as a cross-bow-shot. [ Proverb ]
The air of paradise did fan the house, and angels officed all. [ William Shakespeare ]
Wishes, like castles in the air, are inexpensive and not taxable. [ Haliburton ]
The more honest a man is, the less he affects the air of a saint. [ Lavater ]
Disappointments are to the soul what a thunderstorm is to the air. [ Johann C. F. Von Schiller ]
Civilisation tends to corrupt men, as large towns vitiate the air. [ Amiel ]
The air is full of farewells to the dying. And mournings for the dead. [ Longfellow ]
What a woman says to her lover should be written on air or swift water. [ Catullus ]
Take away desire from the heart, and you take away the air from the earth. [ Bulwer Lytton ]
Like saintly vestals, pale in prayer, their pure breath sanctifies the air. [ Julia C. R. Dorr ]
Loose his beard and hoary hair streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air. [ Gray ]
Man, like everything else that lives, changes with the air that sustains him. [ Taine ]
What woman says to her fond lover should be written in air or the swift water. [ Catullus ]
Day and night, sun and moon, air and light, every one must have, and none can buy. [ Proverb ]
Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ. [ William Shakespeare ]
Take a straw and throw it up into the air, you may see by that which way the wind is. [ John Selden ]
A bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter. [ Ecclesiastes ]
Without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained. [ Ruskin ]
The earth with its scarred face is the symbol of the past; the air and heaven, of futurity. [ Coleridge ]
Beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies. [ Milton ]
Falsehood, like the dry-rot, flourishes the more in proportion as air and light are excluded. [ Whately ]
Too many individuals are like Shakespeare's definition of echo,
- babbling gossips of the air. [ H. W. Shaw ]
The chameleon, who is said to feed upon nothing but air, has of all animals the nimblest tongue. [ Swift ]
May-flowers blooming around him. Fragrant, filling the air with a strange and wonderful sweetness. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Modern women find a new scandal as becoming as a new bonnet, and air them both in the Park every afternoon. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
Fame, they tell you, is air; but without air there is no life for any; without fame there is none for the best. [ Landor ]
The vital air of friendship is composed of confidence. Friendship perishes in proportion as this air diminishes. [ Joseph Roux ]
They have no other doctor but sun and the fresh air, and that such an one as never sends them to the apothecary. [ South ]
Like the air, the water, and everything else in the world, the heart too rises the higher the warmer it becomes. [ Cötvös ]
Amusements to virtue are like breezes of air to the flame - gentle ones will fan it, but strong ones will put it out. [ David Thomas ]
The breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air, where it comes and goes like the warbling of music, than in the hand. [ Lord Bacon ]
Like the air-invested heron, great persons should conduct themselves; and the higher they be, the less they should show. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
There is as much eloquence in the tone of the voice, in the eyes, and in the air of a speaker as in his choice of words. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Our love is inwrought in our enthusiasm, as electricity is inwrought in the air, exalting its power by a subtle presence. [ George Eliot ]
Invention is activity of mind, as fire is air in motion; a sharpening of the spiritual sight, to discern hidden aptitudes. [ Tupper ]
There is no secrecy comparable to celerity; like the motion of a bullet in the air, it flies so swift that it outruns the eye. [ Bacon ]
For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license. [ Montaigne ]
The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint. The affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety. [ Lavater ]
There is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world; and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room. [ George Eliot ]
Thus came the lovely spring, with a rush of blossoms and music, flooding the earth with flowers and the air with melodies vernal. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Good-nature is the very air of a good mind, the sign of a large and generous soul, and the peculiar soil in which virtue prospers. [ Goodman ]
Take a walk to refresh yourself with the open air, which inspired fresh doth exceedingly recreate the lungs, heart and vital spirits. [ Harvey ]
Vanity is the fruit of ignorance. It thieves most in subterranean places, never reached by the air of heaven, and the light of the sun. [ Hoss ]
Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise. [ Horace Mann ]
High air-castles are cunningly built of words, the words well-bedded in good logic mortar; wherein, however, no knowledge will come to lodge. [ Carlyle ]
The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness. [ Percival ]
In portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness consists more in taking the general air than in observing the exact similitude of every feature. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]
The cuffs and thumps with which fate, our lady-loves, our friends and foes, put us to the proof, in the mind of a good and resolute man, vanish into air. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Dreams are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy; which is as thin of substance as the air, and more inconstant than the wind. [ William Shakespeare ]
A lady of genius will give a genteel air to her whole dress by a well-fancied suit of knots, as a judicious writer gives a spirit to a whole sentence by a single expression. [ Gay ]
Fame is not won on downy plumes nor under canopies; the man who consumes his days without obtaining it leaves such mark of himself on earth as smoke in air or foam on water. [ Dante ]
He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement seasons. [ Swift ]
The present is withered by our wishes for the future; we ask for more air, more light, more space, more fields, a larger home. Ah! does one need so much room to love a day, and then to die? [ E. Souvestre ]
As the air and manner of a gentleman can be acquired only by living habitually in the best society, so grace in composition must be attained by an habitual acquaintance with classical writers. [ Dugald Stewart ]
We must not inquire too curiously into motives. They are apt to become feeble in the utterance; the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light. [ George Eliot ]
I would rather dwell in the dim fog of superstition than in air rarefied to nothing by the air-pump of unbelief; in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for breath. [ Richter ]
Grief is a flower as delicate and prompt to fade as happiness. Still, it does not wholly die. Like the magic rose, dried and unrecognizable, a warm air breathed on it will suffice to renew its bloom. [ Mme. de Gasparin ]
He who comes from the kitchen smells of its smoke; and he who adheres to a sect, has something of its cant; the college air pursues the student; and dry inhumanity him who herds with literary pedants. [ Lavater ]
Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over; whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over. [ Colton ]
The sun had not risen, but the vault of heaven was rich with the winning softness that brings and shuts the day,
while the whole air was filled with the carols of birds, the hymns of the feathered tribe. [ James Fenimore Cooper ]
The air seems made up of happiness, the clouds, the trees, the grass, the pathless birds, land and water, - all seem to pulsate happiness, to emit it, to breathe it forth upon us; and it falls upon us as dew upon flowers. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable celestial barrier, and the sacred air-castles of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay hamlets of reality, and man by his nature is yet infinite and free. [ Carlyle ]
To one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea-voyage is full of subjects for meditation; but then they are the wonders of the deep and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes. [ W. Irving ]
Music once admitted to the soul becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies; it wanders perturbedly through the halls and galleries of the memory, and is often heard again, distinct and living as when it first displaced the wavelets of the air. [ Bulwer ]
Every modulated sound is not a song, and every voice that executes a beautiful air does not sing. Singing should enchant. But to produce this effect there must be a quality of soul and voice which is by no means common even with great singers. [ Joubert ]
The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air - it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right. [ Henry George ]
In beginning the world, if you don't wish to get chafed at every turn, fold up your pride carefully, put it under lock and key, and only let it out to air upon grand occasions. Pride is a garment all stiff brocade outside, all grating sackcloth on the side next to the skin. [ Lytton ]
Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light; takes off in some measure from the deformity of vice; and makes even folly and impertinence supportable. [ Addison ]
The birds of the air die to sustain thee; the beasts of the field die to nourish thee; the fishes of the sea die to feed thee. Our stomachs are their common sepulchre. Good God! with how many deaths are our poor lives patched up! how full of death is the life of momentary man! [ Quarles ]
Be it remembered that man subsists upon the air more than upon his meat and drink: but no one can exist for an hour without a copious supply of air. The atmosphere which some breathe is contaminated and adulterated, and with its vital principles so diminished that it cannot fully decarbonize the blood, nor fully excite the nervous system. [ Thackeray ]
In most old communities there is a commonsense even in sensuality. Vice itself gets gradually digested into a system, is amenable to certain laws of conventional propriety and honor, has for its object simply the gratification of its appetites, and frowns with quite a conservative air on all new inventions, all untried experiments in iniquity. [ Whipple ]
Promising is the very air of the time; it opens the eyes of expectation: performance is ever the duller for his act; and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most courtly and fashionable; performance is a kind of will, or testament, which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it. [ William Shakespeare ]
It is not merely the multiplicity of tints, the gladness of tone, or the balminess of the air which delight in the spring; it is the still consecrated spirit of hope, the prophecy of happy days yet to come; the endless variety of nature, with presentiments of eternal flowers which never shall fade, and sympathy with the blessedness of the ever-developing world. [ Novalis ]
There are three wicks you know to the lamp of a man's life: brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute, and out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centers of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness. [ O. W. Holmes ]
The light of the sun, the light of the moon, and the light of the air, in nature and substance are one and the same light, and yet they are there distinct lights: the light of the sun being of itself, and from none; the light of the moon from the sun; and the light of the air from them both. So the Divine Nature is one, and the persons three; subsisting, after a diverse manner, in one and the same Nature. [ R. Newton ]
How absolute and omnipotent is the silence of night! And yet the stillness seems almost audible! From all the measureless depths of air around us comes a half-sound, a half-whisper, as if we could hear the crumbling and falling away of earth and all created things, in the great miracle of nature, decay and reproduction, ever beginning, never ending, - the gradual lapse and running of the sand in the great hour-glass of Time. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
I would rather have a young fellow too much than too little dressed; the excess on that side will wear off, with a little age and reflection; but if he is negligent at twenty, he will be a sloven at forty, and stink at fifty years old. Dress yourself fine where others are fine, and plain where others are plain; but take care always that your clothes are well made and fit you, for otherwise they will give you a very awkward air. [ Chesterfield ]
After all there is a weariness that cannot be prevented. It will come on. The work brings it on. The cross brings it on. Sometimes the very walk with God brings it on, for the flesh is weak; and at such moments we hear softer and sweeter than it ever floated in the wondrous air of Mendelssohn, O rest in the Lord,
for it has the sound of an immortal requiem: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labors.
[ James Hamilton ]
Gentlemen, do you know what is the finest speech that I ever in my life heard or read? It is the address of Garibaldi to his Roman soldiers, when he told them: Soldiers, what I have to offer you is fatigue, danger, struggle and death; the chill of the cold night in the free air, and heat under the burning sun; no lodgings, no munitions, no provisions, but forced marches, dangerous watchposts and the continual struggle with the bayonet against batteries; - those who love freedom and their country may follow me.
That is the most glorious speech I ever heard in my life. [ Kossuth ]
All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf, their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow or along the ground, but prints, in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of its fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens, the ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object covered over with hints which speak to the intelligent. [ Emerson ]